I view my work, first and foremost, as sharing stories and promoting inclusive narratives. Therefore, I produce media, both written or audio, on a variety of topics – interfaith, spirituality, social justice, public affairs, media literacy, and more. My writings usually appear in local papers and on multiple blogs, and audio interviews are often found on WYCE or WGVU, but all articles, interviews, and podcast episodes are all compiled here.

spirituality

Reflecting on this piece from Sr. Nancy Sylvester, I’m wondering what you all are thinking about today – at the meeting of a capitalist, cultural holiday and a liturgical moment. What are your intentional practices of Love? What are your traditions during Lent? What do you get rid of in your life, and what do you add to your life during this day or 40 days? How can we allow Love to transform us through daily acts and practices?

I’m sincerely wondering, because I want more intentional spiritual practices in my life. Things that confront my ego and addiction to technology. Things that ground me and slow me down. Things that remind me to value relationship to one another above status or success. So – tell me. What are your spiritual practices during this time of year?

And – excerpt:

“Those in positions of power and privilege during Jesus’ time felt threatened with Jesus’ lifestyle. What would happen if everyone was seen as equal, worthy of respect and dignity from one another? What would happen if the high priests couldn’t define which sacrifices, rules and laws were necessary to follow if people wanted to achieve a higher place in heaven? What if people believed Jesus’ message that God lives within us all?

Lent reveals the answer. The power of Love is so great a force that if not stopped — put to death — it would transform the world. The systems, structures and consciousness that privilege the few over the many would be no more.”

Lately I’ve been sorting through some thoughts about the transformative power of friendship between women. I’m so lucky to have had empowering, grounding women at my side in all parts of my life – growing up, in college, in my community, professionally, and now in divinity school, as well as women – friends and mentors alike – encouraging, supporting, inspiring me. I can honestly say that the biggest decisions, the most important moments of my life, all have a brigade of women behind them. There’s something particularly vulnerable, transformational, and revolutionary about these friendships and mentorships, that even as a part of patriarchal societies and institutions we are able to help one another survive and thrive.

I’m still figuring out how all these ideas coalesce into my life, into a theory or praxis, but in the mean time I wanted to offer some readings, some food for thought, if you too are interested in thinking about the transformative power of friendship among women. I would love to know what you’re reading or considering as well, in hopes of a larger… theology of friendship, perhaps. None of this is all-encompassing, it’s not the only narrative, but it is – for me at least – a liberating narrative to consider myself a part of living and growing into.

A book I picked up at the beloved Dominican Center at Marywood, the home of my fellow Sisters & Seekers, that provided short meditations from a very cool feminist Nun on the narratives of women friendship in the Bible, reclaiming a history that’s been lost to patriarchal storytellers, affirming the power we have for one another in faith communities today.

How relational interdependency is a revolutionary method of freedom, freedom from capitalistic profit-driven world that re-centers us on one another and mutual support. The piece reminds us that “‘Friend’ and ‘free’ in English…come from the same Indo-European root, which conveys the idea of a shared power that grows. Being free and having ties was one and the same thing. I am free because I have ties, because I am linked to a reality greater than me.”

Big Little Lies

I’ve been rewatching this HBO series and am just really struck by how fiercely these women support and advocate for one another, even amidst a larger narrative that is trying to pit them against one another for sake of drama and entertainment. The way women communicate with each other – confide in each other – seems to show how we’ve been saving one another all along, from assault, trauma,

Finally, coincidentally, an article that I posted on Facebook six years ago today, that reading again resonates just as much if not more, ends with a beautiful line:

“Support, salvation, transformation, life: this is what women give to one another when they are true friends, soul friends, what the Irish call anam cara… We help one another other live and sometimes, we watch—and help—one another die. It happens in movies, sure, but it also happens every day, in real life—now, tomorrow, yesterday. It is transformative and transcendent. It is real. It is love.”

“You know, this prayer thing has me stumped. I really do want to pray. But when I sit down, my mind seems to go blank. I talk to God, but God never seems to talk back. After doing this for a while, I get discouraged and quit. But pretty soon, the nagging is back: “You should be praying.” So I make a resolution, start again, and pretty soon, I stop. What I really like to do is walk in the wild, so on Sunday afternoon, I give myself a treat and go out to the headlands and hike. Sometimes there I really feel like I am praying. But it doesn’t seem to carry over to Monday through Saturday. Anyhow, when my friend told me about the Spiritual Exercises, my heart jumped a little. So here I am.”
–A Contemporary Woman
(The Spiritual Exercise Reclaimed, p 113)

“A practice of daily reflection such as that proposed in the reclaimed examination of consciousness both depends on and fosters the skills of noticing, naming and acting on one’s awareness of God’s presence in daily life.”
(The Spiritual Exercise Reclaimed, p 116)

In my view, these ideas embodied today feel most resonate through Mary Oliver’s poetry. As she wrote in the poem, The Moths:

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

Is Mary Oliver an example of “A Contemporary Woman,” the mysteriously attributed author of the quote at the beginning of the reading? Is the Contemporary Woman bound to find spirituality outside of the institutions that have shut women out, or can women actually reclaim spiritual practices that were created intentionally without them in mind? How can something be reclaimed if it was never claimed by them originally?

Considering the way poets such as Mary Oliver embody Ignatian spirituality today, is this the arena in which women can truly live out such spirituality, outside of the patriarchal confines of religious/Catholic institutions? Or can women truly claim space within a tradition that has never really allowed for their full flourishing?

I appreciate the pushes for feminist reinterpretations of religious texts, but I wonder how much an interpretation counts when it is still not the dominant way of understanding and seeing a text. With this in mind, how can someone like Pope Francis, a spiritual visionary who is still confined to the traditional gender roles of the Catholic church, help shift culture toward a place that allows women’s spiritual gifts to be appreciated and used in broader applications within the church?

This Interfaith Insight appeared in the Kaufman Interfaith Institute Inform on 7/18/17 and in the Grand Rapids Press on 7/20/17.

———–

I am writing this Insight as my final piece working for the Kaufman Interfaith Institute. Having been the Program Manager for the last four years, and as a college intern before that, the interfaith community across west Michigan has become my own community.

However, the time has come for me to build community elsewhere, and that place will be Harvard Divinity School in Boston. This fall, I will begin studies on religion, politics and ethics through their Master of Theological Studies program, learning alongside students of all religious, spiritual, and philosophical backgrounds.

So in this final piece, I wanted to answer the question that many of you have asked me over the last four years: why do I, as a non-religious person, do interfaith work? And more relevant to my current plans, would would a non-religious person go to divinity school?

As I have written previously, I am one of those millennial “Nones,” a term that Pew Research coined to include the over one in three people under the age of 30 who are atheists, agnostics, the spiritual but not religious, and basically anyone who would check on a form, “None of the Above” in regards to religious or spiritual identity.

Being a so-called “None” who convenes and facilitates religiously diverse interfaith spaces, my secular identity has often come up. Almost always the reaction I get is one of surprise and confusion. “But, if you’re not religious, why are you interested in religion?” Or phrased differently, “If you don’t have a faith, why would you be involved with interfaith?”

I never felt the need to ask myself this question until I moved to Grand Rapids. In my undergraduate studies, while certain stereotypes existed against atheists, I was never questioned as to why I was in such spaces. In my religious studies and political science classes, it was clear why I and my secular counterparts cared about learning about religion. Religion, spirituality, and faith were important to us – not only in our political activities nationally and internationally, but in people’s lives – in their activism, organizing, and careers.

For me, it was obvious: religion still matters. It was important for me to understand the traditions and followers in order to understand the world I am a part of. It makes my study of history, politics, and activism deeper and more authentic to the human experience, of which religion is such an integral part for so many individuals and communities.

While I may not be a person of faith, I am a part of a world where faith is an active dynamic affecting all of our lives. To engage with interfaith was a way of appreciating this aspect of existence, with an emphasis toward the lived experiences of people’s stories of faith as well as the doctrines that shape our lives and institutions.

Over these four years of organizing interfaith efforts in west Michigan, our dialogues and service projects did more than teach me new things about religious traditions. Each conversation, each relationship, quickly invoked a sense of “holy envy” in me. A term from Krister Stendahl, the former dean of Harvard Divinity School, holy envy is the recognition of something so beautiful in another person’s tradition that you wish to reflect it in your own tradition.

Realizing how deepening I found interfaith work to be, both personally and professionally, I sought to continue this formation through divinity school.

But this leads to a second question you may be asking: why does a Divinity School let in someone who does not necessarily believe in the Divine? What even is Divinity School?

To many people’s surprise, Divinity School is about much more than training future pastors and ministers. Most notably, places like Harvard Divinity School and many others leading schools have programs that intentionally reflect the religious and non-religious diversity of our country. Harvard itself has multiple theological and ministry initiatives around all religious traditions, not just the Christian tradition.

Specifically, I chose Harvard Divinity School because, as leaders they just marked their 200-year-anniversary, they are on the forefront of the conversation around the future of religious life in America. This is a future that they recognize not only includes the secular, the spiritual, and the seeking, but it is a future that needs these voices in particular to shape our society and communities that will serve all.

It is in this space that I wish to bring my experiences learned from Grand Rapids over the last four years into a place where we can imagine what the future of our shared public life looks like – across the religious, spiritual and secular diversity that too often divides us. After all, in the enduring words of civil rights leader Vincent Harding, we live in a time that calls us “to see visions of life beyond the old boundaries, to search out the new common ground.”

I hope to continue to be a part of this conversation beyond the old boundaries, and seeking out new common ground, both continuously in Grand Rapids, and in my new home in Boston.

For those I have worked with and gotten to know during my time at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute, I want to thank you for the ways in which you have welcomed and challenged me in my growth as an individual, an interfaith leader, and as a human being seeking spiritual meaning. I hope to keep up with as many of you as possible during this next chapter in my life! Please never hesitate to reach out and stay in touch. My continuing email will be katiegordon24@gmail.com.

A few months ago, I wrote two articles on the trend in American religious life that has been dubbed by Pew Research as “the Rise of the ‘Nones.’” This language of the “Nones” is an umbrella term meant to include anyone who falls into a “none of the above” situation when filling out demographic information about their religious tradition. Including atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular,” according to recent surveys the Nones now account for the second largest religious group in America, resulting in roughly one in four overall, and one in three millennials. (Source)

As a so-called None myself, I was interested to see how religious leaders in our city would respond to these pieces. To my delight, a Dominican Sister emailed to let me know how she appreciated the perspective and wanted to learn more about and from the Nones.

When we sat down and talked, the similarities between her group, the Nuns, and my group, the Nones, became so obvious. Both Nuns and Nones are on the margins or fringes of our traditions. Both Nuns and Nones have a track record of challenging institutions in order to promote inclusion and justice. Both Nuns and Nones are seeking community that is open to questions and the continuous search for meaning.

From my own one-on-one relationships with Catholic Nuns, and particularly the Dominican Sisters, I knew how much there would be for us to learn from each other. Based in our shared values, this inter-generational space would lead to conversations about how to sustain ourselves for decades in movements for social justice, how to stay connected with one another in a technological world that has the potential for isolation, and so much more.

Knowing how many Millennial Nones like myself desire spaces to learn from those who came before us, and realizing how older women who are religious desire spaces to connect with younger generations and their energetic engagement with the world around them, we set the first time and place to gather the Nuns and the Nones.

This past weekend, 17 of us came together – a balance between older women who are religious, millennial who are non-religious, and those in between – generationally and religiously.

We talked about the potential limitation or spaciousness of labels and identities. We talked about how questions never go away – but only deepen and gain meaning with age. We talked about how while many of us were taught that religion is black and white, spirituality can be that space in between meant for searching and discovery. We talked about the “deepest questions and unanswered wonderings” of our lives. We asked each other how we “fit” as a human family, how we feed ourselves in sustaining our activism, and what we are looking for in community. We talked about the difference between the community of church and the institution of church, the horizontal and the vertical. We talked about how we seek validation that it is okay to ask and seek, and we received that validation from one another. We were reminded to believe in one another, be okay with failure, look at the long view of history, and that perfect can be the enemy of good.

The words we closed with were ones of renewal, hope, inspiration, gratefulness, generosity, belonging, and whatever the opposite of mansplaining is (maybe womanspiration?).

What excites me most about this gathering is what it indicates beyond Grand Rapids, and beyond the Nuns and the Nones. Similar gatherings to this one are happening across the country, which also grew out of the desire for inter-generational community building around spirituality and social justice. What this reveals about the future of religious life, I hope, is that we will continue to open up spaces that cross the divisions that religion tends to create. Whether divided by generations or traditions, we forget how much there is to learn from one another, and the potential of growing alongside one another. Even with messy, newly created labels like the Nones, and rich, historic staples of religious life like the Nuns, current trends of secular life can be in conversation with long histories of religious life, and we can both be better for it.

It inspired Sisters from the Dominican Center to email me, letting me know how they appreciated the perspective and valued the knowledge of Nones.

I admit I was surprised to learn of the interest from our local women religious in those of us who are outside our traditions – the Nones, the non-religious, the spiritual but not religious.

But once I sat down and talked with them, it became so obvious. Both Nuns and Nones are on the margins or fringes of our traditions. Both Nuns and Nones challenge institutions in order to promote justice. Both Nuns and Nones are seeking community open to questions and searching for meaning.

And there’s also so much we can learn from one another. How to sustain ourselves for decades in movements for social justice. How to stay connected with one another in a technological world that has the potential for isolation. How our different generational perspectives shape our worldview in varied and meaningful ways.

Tonight was our first gathering of Nuns & Nones! Graciously hosted by the Dominican Center, 17 of us came together – a balance between older women religious, millennial non-religious, and those in between – generationally and religiously.

We talked about the potential limitation or spaciousness of labels and identities. We talked about how questions never go away – but only deepen and gain meaning with age. We talked about how while many of us were taught that religion is black and white, it’s actually more of a gray space meant for searching and discovery. We talked about the “deepest questions and unanswered wonderings” of our lives. We asked each other how we “fit” as a human family, how we feed ourselves in sustaining our activism, and what we are looking for in community. We talked about the difference between the community of church and the institution of church, the horizontal and the vertical. We talked about how we seek validation that it is okay to ask and seek, and we received that validation from one another. We were reminded to believe in one another, be okay with failure, look at the long view of history, and that perfect can be the enemy of good.

The words we closed with were ones of renewal, hope, inspiration, gratefulness, spaciousness, belonging, validation, and whatever the opposite of mansplaining is (maybe womanspiration?).

I’m so excited to keep building community with so many women I admire so deeply. And I’m so honored to be in relationship with my community in this way.

I hope this reveals a bit of the future of religious life in America – one at the intersections, open to evolution and revolution, based in relationships and dialogue and growth – together.

Katie will explore the interfaith movement in the US today, and particularly the way young people are using the interfaith movement as a way of promoting social change on campuses and in their community. As Millennials, who are significantly more non-religious and unaffiliated than previous generations, are leading this movement, what unique perspectives do they bring to interfaith work? And how is interfaith uniquely equipped as a space for young people to understand their identity, build inclusive community, and promote social change? Grounded in her own story as a Millennial-None-Interfaith Activist, Katie will share insights from her years as a part of the interfaith movement in America.

I am not from east or west
not up from the ground
or out of the ocean
my place is placeless
a trace of the traceless
I belong to the beloved-Rumi

He drew a circle that shut me out–
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!-Edwin Markham

My heart has grown capable of taking on all forms
It is a pasture for gazelles
A table for the Torah
A convent for Christians
Ka’bah for the Pilgrim
Whichever the way love’s caravan shall lead
That shall be the way of my faith-Ibn Arabi

we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.-Gwendolyn Brooks